The present invention relates to a disposable temporary scaffold/holding fixture to facilitate assembly and implantation of valve leaflets. This benefits a surgeon by providing a structure to help aid in the use of tissue engineered material, allograft, xenograft, and autograft procedures.
There are currently available bio-prosthetic, biological, and mechanical aortic heart valves for human use. The steps involved with one typical procedure for fabrication of a total biological valve reconstruction involves the following:                1. The aorta is surgically dissected within open chest;        2. Calcified aortic valve leaflets are removed from the patient;        3. Commissure-to-commissure distances of the dissected aorta are sized with gages to determine what size individual leaflets will be required for reconstruction;        4. The gages are used to select corresponding tracing templates;        5. Individual valve leaflets are traced on biological tissue like the autologous pericardium;        6. Leaflets are cut and removed from tissue sheets; and        7. A surgeon carefully stitches each leaflet to the wall of the aorta.This is a tedious manual procedure and it is time consuming. Various mediums (e.g., source materials) can be utilized for this application and are not limited to those in this example. It would be very desirable to reduce surgery time and the tedious assembly steps involved with individual leaflet installation.        